Expecting – January 2020

The holidays have finished and it is time for us to take down our live Christmas tree and haul it off to the compost pile in our township.  I still find this practice ever so slightly bizarre after living on a ten acre property in the middle of woods for half my childhood. Growing up we would hoist our parched tree onto the burning pile and within seconds combustion would do its work.  

Now that we live in town, we have to follow proper procedure.  There are people in my neighborhood, however, who fall into one of two categories: they never got the memo on the correct process for disposing of Christmas trees within our township OR they stubbornly refuse to believe the correct process is something they need to follow.  

And so the drama of last night unfolded… The holidays have finished. The weekend began. And mid-Saturday night, the wind began to blow… howling and whistling up and down our streets. Weaving its path in and out of our well-insulated development, through the bare branches of the tall oaks… and gusting up and under the unwrapped, unbound, untethered Christmas trees dotted along our street.

And so it was when I awoke, I found one such untethered tree from one home smacked straight up against a vehicle belonging to a different home. Our little pup didn’t mind - she found the chattering squirrels intriguing and disobediently dashed in and out of the wind-blown trees oblivious to the damage caused by carelessness.

After living on this street for almost twenty years, I can pretty much predict how long this particular tree is going to sit on the sidewalk waiting for its owner to wonder why it's not being picked up week after week by the garbage trucks. This is a repetitive holiday pattern of many years. Inadvertently, one day it will disappear, probably near the second half of February, hauled off by an annoyed neighbor who cannot walk past the brown needles one more day.

And sometimes I wonder if the owner of the dead tree one day just stopped considering if the garbage collection trucks forgot their tree again and apathetically embraced the bare skeleton as a fixture of sorts… kind of like a temporary winter landscape that greets them as they enter their front door every day.

Don’t get me wrong, we have had years when our tree has sat on the side of our house for over a month waiting for the perfect opportunity to shower the inside of the van with needles that the vacuum really never gets. Some years we are still getting poked by a Christmas needle here and there in August when we sit in the third row of the van with just our bathing suits on.

I know there are probably a “thousand” legitimate reasons as to why this morning’s drama-making tree might not have made it to the compost site. Illness, job crisis, priorities… But for the purposes of this discussion, let’s just take those crisis-related reasons off the table for a moment and consider the habitual nature of this process? Not with a pointed finger condemning with shame… but with honesty.

As a family, we have very few traditions we are intentional about keeping.  One we try very hard to keep, though, began over twenty-one years ago when my husband and I got our first live Christmas tree. Over the years, we have loved the process of gearing up to head for the tree farm adventure. We bundled up the kids as our family grew and invited friends to join in our tradition. We argue about the height and width of our tree - every year.  Two years ago, I won the argument and it was the easiest trip ever to the compost pile in January. That little sucker was just the right size to haul away January 2nd in the minivan with the seats folded down.

You see when I head for the tree farm with my wild crew there’s this silent personal understanding that I am going to be the one hauling the tree to the compost pile in January.  I think if Andrei had his way, the tree would remain in our living room until at least April when the last needle turned brown and fell... thereby clogging our precious Dyson vacuum. But for me, I need that pine tree out of the study room asap so the room can be reset for regular daily life.

But I am married to a dreamer… an adventurer. A man who has hauled our family all over the world and beyond to see stars, oceans, waterfalls, mountain ranges, and winter at -20*F. We have driven our SUV across frozen lakes and rivers, hunted alligators in the Everglades on air-boats, hiked up glaciers near Alaska in summer, surfed on the Great Lakes in Michigan, climbed the Eiffel Tower and toured the Notre Dame all with three toddlers in tow. My husband’s quest for adventure and knowledge is insatiable.

This is the man with whom I have to agree each year on the selection of our Christmas tree. Believe me, brown poking needles are nothing to him when compared to the potential of hunting down a tree that wouldn’t even fit into our home, never mind being easily hauled off to the compost pile in January.

He is there for the ride, the adventure, the argument and to conquer the tree farm experience. I’m all about efficiency and practicality on the micro-level… and somehow every year it works out. It is a profound mystery.

You see, somewhere along the journey over these past twenty-one years, I started planning and expecting the absurd suggestions on tree size. I now expect too big. I now expect we will cut the bottom off and have to drive miles with the trunk open trailing needles after the holidays.

One of the most influential teachers in my life, Paul Scanlon, recently posted this quote: “If you do not manage your expectations, you will manage your disappointments.” It’s a simple statement but ever so true.

And so I've kind of wondered for some years - what goes through the neighbor’s mind when they trek to the farm and bundle up their tree, haul it home and then throw it to the curb after the holiday is over…  only to have it sit. For weeks. Maybe they expect they will awaken to their tree mysteriously hauled away by little elves in the middle of the night. And after two or three days, I quite honestly don’t know what they expect. I actually think they just may no longer see their tree out front anymore as it continues to roll into the street, hitting parked cars and decaying little by little every day. And it’s all on public display every morning…

But today, as I looked at the tree squashed up against the neighbor's car, I stopped. Aware. Stopped to consider my expectations; not about Christmas trees, but about life. Are they reasonable? Based in reality? Aligned with wisdom? In keeping with God’s Word? Because if I am not careful, I will be blown and tossed about like this dead Christmas tree... moved by every trial and trouble that comes along.

Or worse... I will stick my baggage out front on display for the world to watch the public decomposition of my unrealistic expectations and inadvertently someone will be forced to deal with my carelessness.

It’s fun to be the adventurer. It’s boring to be the practical one… but there is a beautiful balance when we fix our hearts on God. When we read His Word, find His truth and submit our hearts… When we align ourselves with Him.

When we search out truth, God reveals wisdom. He helps us to set godly and realistic expectations that will carry us through trials and troubles. And in this we find rest. In this, we find peace.

I don’t know what expectations you might have lurking about your “front door”… but I encourage you to seek God’s heart to set things straight.

I think about the life of Jesus who understood managing expectations. He understood He would come to earth and be despised and rejected. He would live a life of loneliness amongst the lowly. He would die, denied and forsaken by His closest friends. He knew He would bear a cross and walk to Calvary alone.

He bore our sin that we might live free. He never wavered. He never stumbled. He never stopped moving forward with His plan for our redemption.  He set His expectations in such a way that He could finish what he set out to do - redeem His beloved Creation.

And so today, may we find hope as followers of God to walk in the example He set before us. May we be intentional to set Godly and realistic expectations so that we may walk in the fullness of His joy!